8 big web design mistakes that drives away website visitors

Posted on March 15, 2021

It is the wish of every website owner to have as many people as possible visit their website. They do their best in hiring the best website designers and invest their time in promoting their websites on social media and other platforms. Their goal is to have their visitors stick around on the website and most probably convert into customers.

However, it can be quite difficult to have the visitors stick around on your website, unless they have a reason to. There are many factors ranging from the design to the user experience that dictates whether they will and come back again or turn their backs and go forever. In most cases, the reasons for them to abandon the site are due to simple mistakes on the web designer’s part.

In this article, you will discover 8 web design mistakes that drive away your website visitors - and how to fix them to make them stick around:

1. Slow loading speed

A slow loading website sucks. I mean.. no one is willing to spend eternity waiting for your website to load. Website visitors have very high expectations: 47% of consumers expect a web page to load within 2 seconds or less. 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load. Every 1-second delay in loading your website will send away your potential customers to your competitors. 79% of online shoppers who have trouble with site performance say they won’t return to the site to buy again.

Use these free tools to test the speed of your webpages: Google PageSpeed Insights, Pingdom Website Speed Test and GTMetrix.

Here is an article that gives tips on how to increase your website loading speed.

2. Cluttered homepage

Your homepage being the first page your website visitors will land to when they visit your web address is the most important page on your website. A disorganized homepage cluttered with a lot of unnecessary elements may put off your visitors and make them leave.

A good homepage should be well organized with a summary of what the whole website is about. It should be simple with a neat design with a good balance of colors, images, texts, and white space.

3. Poor user experience(UX)

User experience refers to how a user feels while interacting with the website. If people find your website difficult to use or unattractive, they will likely leave it and not come back again.

To improve your website user experience: make it is easy to use, beautiful and eye-catching, easy to navigate, and with quality content.

50.81% of all website visitors(excluding tablets) use mobile devices. Always test your website across multiple devices just to be sure your website users get a superb experience regardless of the devices they use.

4. Confusing navigation

One of the major reasons why visitors leave a website is difficulty in navigation from one page to another. If your visitors cannot find their way around your website, then you could be losing a good portion of them.

You will probably find that every popular website has a navigation bar at the top. Your website should have a clear and precise navigation bar for visitors to hover over and click.

5. Lack of calls-to-action

Your website visitors will always come and leave without taking any action if you don’t make them to. Surprisingly, people will typically do what you ask of them. For example, on your website if you end a blog post with "Let us know your thoughts in the comment section" or "Like, Comment and Share" on social media you will notice higher engagement rates than when you don’t ask them to take any action.

Guide potential customers to a specific action with a clear, prominent, and well-distinguished button or link. Such calls-to-action may include: “enroll”, “register”, “contact us”, “book appointment”, “request quote”, “get started”, etc

6. Broken links on the website

Broken links are one of the strongest reasons why people usually leave a website. If a visitor wants to navigate from one page on your website to another but the link is broken, this will leave a bad impression. Clicking on a link that leads to an error page, redirects to the same page, or simply does nothing can be frustrating. The best way to get rid of broken links is to constantly keep a check on your web pages.

7. Outdated information on site

It is important to regularly keep updating the information on the website no matter how old the website gets. If your website visitors discover that the information on your website is obsolete and no longer relevant, they will leave your site and hardly come back again.

It is very important to keep your site content fresh and regularly updated. This will help retain credibility and respect for your website in your audience’s minds.

8. Poor quality content

You need to provide your website visitors value or else they have no reason to stay. Ensure your site has unique and rich content free from grammatical and spelling mistakes. The content should be informative, educative, or entertaining and should talk to your target audience in a way they can understand and relate.

Conclusion

In this article we have explored 8 common mistakes that causes your website visitors to leave your website and how to fix them.

In addition to retaining your website visitors, fixing these web design mistakes will also help your website to rank higher on search engines and improve conversions.

If you are ready to revamp your website, our talented team of website designers and developers can create you a clean, professional and responsive website that will bring you results at an affordable price. Learn more about our professional website design and development services in Kenya today!